Is the answer blowing in the wind?

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It's wind power. And Wednesday night in Pomeroy, Garfield County officials held an open house about the possibility of large scale wind power generation in the county.

Puget Sound Energy is teaming up with Blue Sky Wind for the Lower Snake River Wind Project. Public Works Director Grant Morgan said they applied for permits in Garfield County at the end of January.

"We are getting into the process of developing an environmental impact statement and this is one of the first phases of doing that," said Morgan.

Morgan said the county could make some money off the project, but nothing is firm yet.

"Well in Garfield County, their application and notifications went out it stated approximately 440 wind towers in this application for Garfield County and they've identified the possibility of another 286 in Columbia County, but that really hasn't been finalized by any means at this point," said Morgan.

The public was welcome to ask questions at the meeting. Morgan said citizens seem to be open to the idea. Eventually the county will take official public comments as they move through the conditional use permit process.

Morgan said he hopes the environmental studies will be complete this fall. There was another public meeting Thursday night in Dayton about the Columbia County part of the project.

There is a lot of wind over here and it's not a high density population because we are so rural and they just identified this as a good place to put them," said Morgan.